Now in its second year, the UTS: ACRI/BIDA Poll 2022 by the Australia-China Relations Institute and the Centre for Business Intelligence & Data Analytics at the University of Technology Sydney takes the Australian public’s pulse on current aspects of, and recent events in, the Australia-China relationship with a view to better understanding this immediate past and some of the trends which may shape its future.

It examines how views have changed since the inaugural 2021 poll and lays out divisions in opinion within four demographic areas: age groups, state/territory of residence, geographical location (urban or rural) and how the respondent voted in the 2019 federal election.

The mixture of views revealed by the UTS:ACRI/BIDA Poll 2022 suggests that the presentation of the Australia-China relationship through a binary lens or a zero-sum prism does not completely align with perceptions in the wider community. There remains a divide between government views and much analytical commentary on the one hand, and popular attitudes on the other. However, in tracking the change in attitudes in some areas between this year and the last, it might also be said that the dominance of the elite narrative does appear to be slowly becoming more entrenched in the public consciousness.

Nonetheless, public opinion with respect to Australia-China relations remains in a state of flux. The results do not paint a neat picture. But by their very complexity they play a critical role in charting the intricacies of the bilateral relationship and helping think through the challenges. All in all, they serve to underline that this is the most challenging period Australian diplomacy has faced since Japan threatened the East Asian order in the 1930s.